Summary:

"I don't mean to come here and freak you out," Scott said, though he knew there was no avoiding it. He'd been where they were before. It had felt like he was dying, back then. "I just don't want you to think you're the only ones, okay? There's lots of us."

Their eyes snapped to him in unison, startled and intense. Hollander croaked, "What?"

"There's over sixteen hundred guys in the MLH and AHL," he reminded them, because it had felt improbable to him when he first heard until he remembered the sheer size of the hockey world. "There's — well, we don't know how many of us there are, but there's at least seventeen of us that know each other. Plus you two. We watch out for each other."

His eyes enormous, Hollander asked, "There's, what? A secret underground gay hockey network?"

Scott shrugged. "Yeah, basically."

----

Ilya and Shane find their way into The Tennis Club, a network of closeted hockey players that hook up - so long as everyone keeps it casual. Which is no problem! They can do casual, right?